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Urgent: change your FB settings now if you want to see your favourite Left sites

Mike at the excellent Vox Political site has spotted a change to Facebook’s processes that means, whether by design or accident, that Facebook users are far less likely to see posts by their favourite independent, left-wing news outlets – unless they make a change to the settings that control their feeds.

Mike writes:

Normally the SKWAWKBOX stats show a ratio of around four or five visitors via Facebook for every one via Twitter. Over the last few days that has dropped to around one and a half Facebook referrals to every Twitter visitor. Mike appears to have uncovered the reason why.

So, as a matter of urgency – both so you don’t miss your favourite articles and to make sure your favourite independent left-wing sites are supported as they need to be:

Go to the main Facebook page of each of your favourite outlets and change those settings to ‘see first’. The SKWAWKBOX’s Facebook page is here.

Then please share this article to your contacts – on Facebook and on Twitter – so everyone knows to do the same. Whether it’s incompetence, unintended consequences or by design, Facebook will keep your favourites out of your sightline if you don’t.

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The “see first” option appears under the button marked following on the page in question – click “following” and a drop down menu appears with a list of options – make sure yours is set to ‘see first’, as mine now is.

You are not alone. Yet again I was viewing the article about Hunt being labelled ” absolute disgrace ” by deputy speaker [as far as I got] only to find myself back at FB login page !!!. Happens probably daily. Just posted “who pulls who’s strings? Clickin on pictures without share buttons gets page with share button up often ? I often don’t get to even see if there is a share button. Wiped off page before I get a chance lol

>>As for Mike Sivier – no time for him at all. Too ‘conservative’ with his comments section. Won’t allow posts that aren’t ‘moderate’ enough for him.

He is very disabled friendly and I would say true left wing Labour. If you mean he won’t write the so-called centrist junk on his site GOOD! There are enough sites to promote that stuff like Labour list ugg..

No, I mean he won’t put up anything of – shall we say – ‘A different tangent’ to his.

I have had posts most critical of so-called ‘labour moderates’ not put up on several occasions when I was a regular poster (Under a different pseudonym but with the same email address) on his site a few years back – around the time just before & just after he changed the web address.

I have been critical of bliar’s Govt and not had them put up on there. I have made posts with detailed criticism from first hand experience of the work programme and A4e not put up on there. In the end he stopped putting up any of my posts. I even questioned him and asked for a reason and he didn’t deign to reply – or post my reasonable question.

I went back to his site recently and posted as ‘The Toffee’, which went up. Then he must’ve got wise to my email address or something because he was up to his old tricks again a day or so later…

I am getting people saying this happened two years ago, as if its fake news that has been printed and its false to suggest a ‘conspiracy’. Can you follow up on this with more information because I would hate to have people cut out of getting information because it was thought this is fake news. Important.

You don’t get unlimited ‘See first’ only a very few of my friends or even family are getting notifications of posts.Until a few weeks ago I would sometimes get 80 or more notifications of shares, follows, comments and they’ve even hugely contained the pop ups and don’t show updates of posts. Now I get a handful a day. The privacy notifications attempt to be intimidating warning me I should change my settings. I often get ‘Privacy’ notifications telling me someone who is not in my friend list has posted on my timeline and even naming people I’ve either shared something with or have shared something I posted. More recently they’ve taken to deleting posts such as Parliamentary committee meetings, Question time and even a BBC news report as Spam. Also recently they’ve stopped me from commenting on groups I belong too removing the ‘Share’ and sometimes ‘Comment’ buttons. I have one friend who was ‘warned’ for sharing on my timeline then blocked from doing so. So unless people actually visit my timeline they’re missing vast amounts of news often quicker than MSM – I also notice that many alternative media outlets are being marked as ‘Not safe’ such as The Canary and more recently I wasn’t able to post anything on skwawkbox I had a particular article I had to tweet it to them. The Mirror is also being messed with by Google no matter what whitelists I add sites too the plugins are blocked. I’ve even noticed that it’s harder to share from alternative sites or share contentious information. I’ve been told off by fb for ‘Sharing an item too much’ but I can’t find any way to contact moderators to ask what they’re playing at only feedback that states on the page ‘May not be responded too’